The Fine Print

Only available on your first checking account, if you currently hold or have held an account in the last 90 days you’re not eligible

Bonus will be eligible for withdrawal after 90 days, if the account is closed within 90 days the bonus will be taken back

You must qualify for the membership requirements: through your church or ministry or if a family member is already a member

All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them

Avoiding Fees

The free checking account is always fee free, the checking plus account is fee free for the first year and then requires a direct deposit or average monthly balance of $1,500 or greater. There is no mention of any early account termination fee but it’s worth noting that the bonus will be taken back if you cancel your account within 90 days The full schedule of fees can be accessed here.

At the same time open a 5% APR with $5,000 (maximum allowed) after one year I’d receive $250 in interest. If I held this in a 1% APR account I’d only receive $50, this is another $200 in profit (assuming you’re not using rewards checking accounts or high interest prepaids)

Close my checking account after 90+ days to avoid the bonus being taken back

Wait for my CD to mature and then withdraw the funds to my regular checking account

In total you’d make ~$300 in profit (in comparison to a 1% APR savings account) which isn’t a bad return considering this is a soft credit pull to open. We haven’t added this to our section on the best offers because most people won’t be able to qualify, but you can find it in our regular section for bank sign up offers.

What exactly qualifies as a member of a Christian ministry? I looked at the site and I don’t really get it as far as what qualifies a person for membership. Do you think they really verify that you are a member of a church? I mean if you’re not then you’re going to hell anyway…LOL. So what would it hurt. They get your money to lend out to churches. God works in mysterious ways. They also have a PLOC that is very competitive “Personal Credit Line as low as 5.10% APR.”
Praise Jesus.

They actually check unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your world view), you’ll need to call to see if your particular ministry qualifies. It seems as if it’s basically just protestant ministries though, looks like a pretty good CU to be honest.

I’m actually very impressed by this credit union so far. I signed up for the $100 offer, but I want to find a reason to keep actively using them because they make me feel very welcome. They even sent me a paperback book on money management in the mail as a welcome gift.

Since signing up, I also received offers of a $10 Amazon gift card for trying the mobile app (just have to sign in as far as I understand) and a $10 account credit for making 5 bill payments. Those in addition to the $5 for signing up for eStatements. Once I get all of the bonuses, that makes this worth $125 in total. Not bad at all for doing very little. And like I said, I actually like this place and want to keep using them, so their promotion definitely worked to get me as a customer.

I wasn’t going to since I’ve been debating the trade-off for possibly better returns and nearly perfect liquidity keeping the money in my Betterment account instead, but I made up my mind and opened the 5% CD tonight. (You have 30 days after joining to apply for the offer). I only did $500, but that’s still $25 in guaranteed interest.

To add to my previous comment, I accidentally incurred $216 in overdraft fees (all for one mistake–I misjudged my available funds when I made 4 small bill payments, which all failed two days in a row, each with a $27 fee each time), but when I called them up and explained that I didn’t realize the sign-up bonus in my account doesn’t become available for 90 days, they were kind enough to refund all of the fees as a “one-time courtesy” and apologized for any misunderstanding with the bonus. It was my fault, no question, but they were still nice enough to retract the fees.

Honestly I would expect that from any decent bank, especially for a new customer with an honest mistake, but nonetheless it’s another reason I’m very impressed with them already.

William, what’s the best way to close all these checking accounts with balance fees? If you transfer all your money out online then close the account could they hit you with a low balance fee? I know wells fargo wanted 5 dollars to write me a check. I had to get it in cash.
thanks

No. But then again, who is REALY a Christian. Maybe 0.5% of those that say they are.
Other 99.5% belive in maybe 2% stuff from bible but they still call themself christians.
Same goes for other fairytales.

I tried to join a few months ago… They were wanting to call my church, or have me send a copy of a tithe statement or proof of membership on church letterhead – they’re serious about screening members. I gave up on ethical grounds.. I’m not going to lie about being a churchgoing Christian….

An interesting twist would be for a Christian to join and then by law they’d have to let his Satanist brother join… 🙂

In this context, the people he was speaking to knew this meant excessive/abusive interest charged on the debtor. On the other hand, a credit union willing to give someone a 5% interest CD is certainly acceptable.

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